Teach Your Children Well
by Amilyn
Summary: Han and Leia start their family, and Leia grapples with what comes next. Everyone struggles with reconciling knowledge and history to their places in the New Republic. Written for @wishfulfanficing in the Tumblr Han/Leia Secret Santa Holiday Exchange 2019. No warnings apply.


Teach Your Children Well

by Amy L. Hull

Han and Leia start their family, and Leia grapples with what comes next. Everyone struggles with reconciling knowledge and history to their places in the New Republic.

Written for wishfulfanficing in the Tumblr Han/Leia Secret Santa Holiday Exchange 2019.

Chapter 1: The Past is Just a Goodbye

A new baby brought joy, wonder, exhaustion, tenderness, and the reawakening of old griefs.

Ben and the Galactic Concordance had come together. It was unbelievable, that there had been peace before their son was born three days ago. Three short, interminable days.

When Han had trudged out to get bread, stew, and fruit for dinner, Leia and Ben were sleeping soundly. The baby was tucked up on her chest, ear to her heart, with Leia's hand on his back. Both had been breathing audibly. Han, also exhausted, had wanted to join them, but food had to come first.

That was less than three quarters of an hour before.

Holding the food parcels in one arm, he slowed the door as it slid closed, minimizing the sound. Too late. He heard mewling sounds. Quickly setting the food on the entry table, Han kept one hand near his blaster as he scanned their quarters...apartment...whatever. The small sitting area was clear, and he peered around the corner into their tiny bedroom. There, in the gliding chair next to their bed, was Leia. Ben was nursing, greedy but content, lips smacking occasionally.

The soft crying was Leia. Her face was red and wet, tears dripping from her chin onto Ben's soft baby clothes.

Ben, for his part, didn't seem to mind.

Han holstered his blaster and sat on the footstool, pulling Leia's feet into his lap and stroking her legs. He remained silent. Asking questions was the least effective way to get information from the last princess of Alderaan.

"Han, I'm going to ruin him."

He looked a question at her.

"Look at him." She traced the curve of his cheek with a finger, but held back from actually touching him.

Under a shock of dark curls, huge, dark baby eyes stared around Leia's breast and into her face. The baby regarded her like she could do magic-and, Han supposed, she could in a way: she'd grown a whole baby in that tiny body. And she had the Force, a magic as incomprehensible as ever, both in its existence and the fact that _Leia_ could use it. Of course, Leia could do anything, and his son already knew that as well as Han.

Leia traced the curve of his ear, sniffled, and wound a dark curl around her finger. One of Ben's tiny, baby fists patted and squeezed her chest, the movements jerky as he worked out a new body and muscles and gravity.

"I'm looking at both of you." Han's voice came out thick, and he cupped their baby's head under his palm. "And you're perfect."

Leia's breath caught, her chin puckered, and she tucked her face toward Ben as more tears flowed. She was shaking her head, so he'd gotten it wrong somehow.

"You wanna tell me what's wrong, sweetheart?" Always leave the choice to her. He'd learned that within a minute of meeting her. Less shouting that way.

"You're right. He is perfect. His long fingers, his little toes. He's perfect and soft and he loves me and loves you...and I'm going to ruin him." Her voice caught, and it took her a few breaths to get on top of it again. "I can't even shield my thoughts or my feelings. He's hearing all of this," she gestured first between them then solely at her chest and face, "but he's hearing all _this_ too. He's brand new, and I'm pouring doubt and fear into him. We don't even know what that could do to a Force-sensitive child."

"Are you sure," Han offered, hesitating, "are you sure you don't want to take Luke up on his offer? If a little training would ease your mind-"

Leia shook her head. "He's off planet and, even if he were here...Han, he's still researching _if_ there are lightsaber practice forms...not even _what_ they were, but if they _existed_. If he can't find practical records like that, how could he possibly find out how my feelings will affect Ben?"

Leia held Ben close, tucking a finger into his hand so he would hold tight.

"We'll figure it out, sweetheart."

"How? Every. Single. Being. All of them. Every single one is _dead_. Luke is trying to reconstruct an entire practice from a relic and a few pebbles. And now what? I'm supposed to go off with him and we'll just...hope we don't repeat all the mistakes that led us here? Hope we don't recreate a Vader or an Emperor?"

Setting a hand on her knee, he stroked lightly with his thumb. "Leia, that's an awful lot of responsibility you're taking on there."

"It is a lot of responsibility!" Her frustration had stopped her tears. "Just last week, I could keep him safe, could meditate with him, calm him inside of me with just my breathing. Now he's his own person and-" She paused, took a breath, and lowered her voice. "Han, my father was _evil_. I don't care what Luke says about him being 'redeemed' at the end. All that cruelty-" She barely whispered the last words. "It's _in me_. What if I've passed that on-"

"All right, stop it right there." Han pulled the chair closer to him, took her face in his hands, and waited until she met his eyes. "You are not tainted by him. You are the best, the strongest person I know. You are nothing like him. And-"

"Han," she whispered, her eyes flicking down to Ben. The baby looked from one of them to the other, frowning. His dark eyes were so much like his mother's, but he looked like he was sizing them up, like he was listening. "I can feel him thinking, trying to understand. I don't think there is some terrible, looming, inevitable fate, but I'm still afraid." She'd looked away when admitting that, but looked up, every word weighted with eye contact. "We don't know. I don't know how to do this. Neither of us does."

Han swiped his hand over his mouth. She was right, of course. She was right so damned often. "What if we could help Luke find more of that history? Do you think that might help?" If nothing else, it might help her feel better. "I mean, There have to be records. In the whole galaxy, it's not possible that none of this stuff survived."

Leia swallowed hard, rocking gently because Ben had drifted off to sleep, still half-sucking in slumber. "I wish that were true. But the Emperor? He was incredibly thorough. Han, I've looked. For five years, on dozens of HoloNet stations on dozens of planets. But...it's gone. Every speech, every public record, every image...the Emperor purged it all. As far as the records, it's as if Alderaan never existed." She took a shaky breath. "And...if he could do that across the entire galaxy, what must he have done to the Jedi records there on Coruscant?"

Han nodded slowly. That kind of sound, logical consideration of information and evidence made Leia an excellent commander. In a crisis, she kept a cool head, saw all the options before her, and almost inerrantly assessed the best move. It occurred to Han that this could be one of the manifestations of her previously-latent Force sensitivity. She'd saved their skins dozens of times simply by being a human lie detector.

But that didn't mean she had all the pieces in this case. "The galaxy is a huge place, Your Worship. We won't stop looking. And in the meantime, you remember. You and Carlist are the living memory."

She tried to nod, but her face twisted again. "I can't show him where he came from..." She frowned, absently patting Ben. "I...don't even know where _I_ came from, only where I grew up. I can't show him Alderaan, and I can't tell him his background beyond that-half because no one can know, and half because I don't even know."

"I never knew any of that myself." Han pulled up a chair next to the glider, pulled her to his shoulder, and set his feet on the footstool by hers. "It's rough. But you and me, sweetheart, we can do anything." He picked up one tiny foot and stroked it. "We'll be where he came from, and we can show him where he's going."

~~end chapter 1~~


End file.
